president’s address. 
9 
lias been beating uninterruptedly about these microscopic vegetables, 
and many important discoveries have been made, although we are 
still, as it were, merely on the borders of the dark continent, if 
I may so call it. Some idea may be formed of the importance of 
the subject, when I say that not less than 100,000 persons die 
annually in the United Kingdom of bacterial disease, nearly 
90,000 of whom succumb to the attack of a single one of these 
tiny organisms, viz., the Tubercle Bacillus. It is not surprising, 
then, that bacteriological laboratories have sprung up in all parts 
of Europe, so that even England has been obliged at last to 
follow tho example of France, Germany, and semi-barbarous 
Eussia — as she is often called, I know not why. Tho work done in 
this country has, up to tho present, been infinitesimal compared 
with that achieved abroad. Whether it is that English doctors 
feel few attractions for a study that must be considered an 
unprofitable one from an £ s. d. point of view, or that the 
stringent laws in vogue against vivisection have pretty well 
strangled scientific research in this direction, I know not ; but 
certain it is, that for one line devoted to bacteriology in an English 
medical journal, at least a hundred arc to be found in the medical 
journals of tho Continent. To give a practical illustration of my 
remarks I may say, that a few weeks since, wishing to obtain 
some recent English work on this important subject, I was 
obliged to content myself with a treatise published not less than 
live years ago. 
Premising that many of my hearers have little or no knowledge 
of the subject, I may say that Pathogenic Bacteria or Microbes, as 
it would be more correct to call them, have been divided by Cohn 
into Micrococci, Bacteria, Bacilli, and Spirilla. The micrococci 
arc globular or spherical. When two of them are joined together, 
dumb-bell fashion, they are called Diplococci. When several are 
strung together in a row, they are styled Streptococci ; and when 
a number of the microscopic spherules are massed together like 
a bunch of grapes, they receive the appellation of Staphylococci. 
Bacteria, in tho more limited sense of the term, are short rods, 
whilst the bacilli are elongated rods. It is thus obvious that the 
